Hue Gourmet continues to kind of quietly fly under the radar for most (present company excluded), but no matter how much attention it gets, I'll never think it's enough.

What a unique little gem this place is. In a city filled with scads and scads of Southern Vietnamese restaurants all serving the same pho/bun/com dishes with varying degrees of skill, here's our little Central Vietnamese joint, tucked away in the back of Mekong, making all manner of special dishes you won't see anywhere else in town.

It all starts simply enough, with the best Bun Bo Hue in town...

Bún Bò Huế

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...which is, in and of itself, enough to merit inclusion on the list. But the atypical soups and rice dishes keep coming...

Cơm Hến

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Mì Quảng

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Bánh Canh Cua

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...and they're full of flavor, so carefully prepared, and so unafraid to be what they should be rather than sanitized versions thereof. But they keep coming...

Bánh Bèo

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Bánh Giò

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Bánh Lọc Trần

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Bánh Lọc Lá

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Nem Chua Huế

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...and it's so painfully obvious that there is absolutely nothing even remotely like Hue Gourmet anywhere else in town.

Thankfully, when Lan decided to step away from the restaurant last year, her sister and her sister's husband took over, ensuring that everything lives up to Hue Gourmet's impressive standards.

Though Phoenix is packed to the gills with Vietnamese restaurants, precious few stand out. I submit that none stand out like Hue Gourmet, and I'm excited to nominate them for renewal.